Synopses & Reviews
When Being Indian in Hueyapan came out in 1975, it challenged commonly held ideas about culture and identity in indigenous Mexico, raising questions that remain as provocative today as they were over thirty years ago. Now in this revised and updated edition, Judith Friedlander places her widely acclaimed work in historical context. The book describes the lives of the inhabitants of an indigenous pueblo during the late 1960s and early 1970s and analyzes the ways that Indians like them have been discriminated against since early colonial times. After presenting the case as she saw it in 1975, Friedlander examines the relevance of her arguments for explaining the changes that have subsequently taken place over the intervening years, following the story into the twenty-first century, both locally in Hueyapan and nationally. Friedlander pays particular attention in a new final chapter to the role anthropologists have played in defining the so-called Indian problem and in finding solutions to it, most recently as advocates of indigenous rights. In the process, she takes a critical look at current debates about identity politics and the meaning of multiculturalism.
Review
"When I read this book in a graduate seminar in 1982, it provoked passionate debate and critical engagement. How to gauge the cumulative ideological influence of colonialism, state building, and other powerful forces on the meaning of Indianness, and the socio-economic place of indigenous peoples, in Mexico? How to fully register this influence, without neglecting the generative processes of indigenous self-making and resistance? Especially with the new final chapter on neoliberal multiculturalism, Friedlander's answers to these questions are just as provocative, timely and vital to consider now as they were 25 years ago. There is no higher praise that can be bestowed on social science research than to affirm its longevity, its ability to link empirical particularity to the enduring, big picture problems of our times.
Being Indian in Hueyapan is richly deserving of this praise."--Charles R. Hale, University of Texas at Austin; President of the Latin American Studies Association 2006-07
"This is a very instructive book on one of Mexico's old, poor, now mostly trashed villages, the kind that urbane Mexicans keep reinventing as 'Indian,' or 'indigenous,' and keep exploiting however they can. In a poignant "revision" it combines the author's original work of 1969-70 (when she was 25), her mature reflections on her work and the village now, particularly the family she loved there and its new generations, and her critical take on "self-serving" anthropology, American and Mexican. It carries sharp, strong arguments about the meaning of 'being Indian,' or 'indigenous,' and the confusion in Mexico (but not only there) over nationalism, ethnicity, belonging, and alienation, 35 years ago and now. It makes you see power's continual resort to 'culture' to justify exploitation."--John Womack, Harvard University
Synopsis
Judith Friedlander’s Being Indian in Hueyapan is recognized as a major contribution to the anthropological literature on Mexico’s indigenous peoples. Now, in this new and expanded edition, Judith Friedlander takes the story up to the early years of the twenty-first century.
Synopsis
In this revised and updated edition, Judith Friedlander places her widely acclaimed work in historical context. The book describes the lives of the inhabitants of an indigenous pueblo during the late 1960s and early 1970s and analyzes the ways that Indians like them have been discriminated against since early colonial times.
Synopsis
When Being Indian in Hueyapan came out in 1975, it challenged commonly held ideas about culture and identity in indigenous Mexico, raising questions that remain as provocative today as they were over thirty years ago. Now in this revised and updated edition, Judith Friedlander places her widely acclaimed work in historical context. The book describes the lives of the inhabitants of an indigenous pueblo during the late 1960s and early 1970s and analyzes the ways that Indians like them have been discriminated against since early colonial times. After presenting the case as she saw it in 1975, Friedlander examines the relevance of her arguments for explaining the changes that have subsequently taken place over the intervening years, following the story into the twenty-first century, both locally in Hueyapan and nationally. Friedlander pays particular attention in a new final chapter to the role anthropologists have played in defining the so-called Indian problem and in finding solutions to it, most recently as advocates of indigenous rights. In the process, she takes a critical look at current debates about identity politics and the meaning of multiculturalism.
About the Author
Judith Friedlander has done anthropological research on questions of ethnic identity in Mexico, the American Southwest and France. In addition to Being Indian in Hueyapan, she is best known for having written Vilna on the Seine: Jewish Intellectuals in France Since 1968 and for translating works by the French public intellectual Alain Finkielkraut. Since 1972, Friedlander has taught Anthropology at SUNY Purchase, Hunter College/the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the New School for Social Research. She has also served as an academic dean at these three institutions, most recently as dean of arts and sciences at Hunter College.
Table of Contents
Zeferina Barreto and her Family (1969-1970) * The History of Doña Zeferina and her Family * The History of Hueyapan * What it Means to be Indian in Hueyapan * Religion in Hueyapan * The Role of the State in Post-Revolutionary Mexico: A New Period of "Evangelization" in Hueyapan * Cultural Extremists * The Anthropologist and the Indians * Being Indian Revisited